


the queen dressed all in black marble

by magisterequitum



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything she has ever had, she got it by taking it. Life was like that, she'd learned. You had nothing if you did not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the queen dressed all in black marble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atreic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreic/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this, recipient. I tried hard to give you some backstory and to tie in these two like you asked. 
> 
> Special thanks to my beta, who I will reveal later.

A woman and a man danced, fingers pressed tip to tip, one hand lower than society deemed appropriate where it cupped the dip of her back. They had eyes only for one another, unconcerned with those who held no interest for them. 

And if his words whispered falsities, if he breathed words against her religion and order against her collarbone later in dark places with bitterness and scorn in his tone, the sacrilegiousness only served to excite her further. 

If this was a game, game of what, game of life, then she had finally figured out not just how to play it, but how to change the rules. It’s the most fun she’d ever had.

 

 

Her mother was horrible at the game. Her mother never had any of the pieces to even play. But the one kind thing that she did was give Marisa the way to get them. 

There were few memories of her childhood that she could still dredge up; there was a difference between those one could remember and those one allowed to be remembered. She was not a woman who liked to dwell on her childhood. It had done nothing for her then and would do nothing for her ever. She dumped the memories and images and remembrances from her recall like burning correspondence in an open pit of fire. 

All save one:

Her mother’s thin, bony fingers slid through her hair, smoothing over the dark locks, tangles banished by the wooden comb that sat on the chipped and worn vanity. Bent and cracked nails caught on the skin of her cheek. Her mother leaned down so that her face was next to hers, dry skin against youth’s smoothness. 

Though she had only ten years to her name and her mother twice over, and there is difference in brittle and cracked hair, she could still see the similarities that mark them as kin. 

Her mother sighed, a wet exhale against her face. “You will have to be better, ‘Isa. Do better.”

She was ten and she did not understand. 

“I cannot give you a life. You will have to take it.” 

That was the last night she ever saw her mother. 

 

 

The next morning her mother dressed her in her best clothes: the dress with the tiny tear in its seam, the stockings that had escaped any stains, and her only pair of black shoes, all buttoned over by the oversized coat her mother had one day brought home and given her. 

She’d walked her to a place with a tall iron gate at the front, distant brick buildings beyond a spotty green lawn. There, she’d passed her hand over to a woman with her hair held in place at the base of her neck, gray whispers tickling wrinkled skin on her face. 

Marisa did not look back to her though she knew her mother could be seen as she walked away and left her there. Her daemon clung to her neck, black horny claws pressing into her skin. It was only later that night that she realized he would never change again. 

 

 

The other girls in the dormitory awed over the fact that Marisa had a settled daemon while theirs still flitted from shape to shape. This girl’s was a little squirrel that chittered wildly into her daemon’s ear. Another had a reptile with a lumbering body and wide eyes and a spiky tail. Some of them attempted to replicate the glossy gold fur that was warm beneath her fingers as she gripped him tight to her. None of them succeeded. 

They left her alone when her daemon seized the squirrel in his hands and squeezed tight in warning. 

Later when it was only her in her tiny bed, the sheets scratchy over her skin not covered by the nightgown they had given her, she whispered to him and asked why he had done that. 

“Because,” he whispered back into her neck. 

 

 

“We must not be like them,” her daemon said to her, looking out at the other girls who chattered away in the classroom. 

“Why not?” She stroked his golden fur, delighting in the way the strands shone bright in the light. She made sure to angle her head so it looked like she was paying attention at the woman at the front who was teaching them their lesson today. 

“Remember what your mother said.”

Marisa’s fingers tightened in his fur and she felt his pain at her sudden action. She ignored it. “She left us. I care not for what she said.”

He dug his nails into her arm, a blossom of pain to match what her fingers had done. “We must be smart. Or do you want nothing.” 

No, she wanted everything.

 

 

And so she did as her daemon had said. 

They smiled and listened in lessons, but they also listened for other things. She did not want to stay in a dormitory or become a nurse or a secretary or any of the other things that the teachers were always telling the other girls they could one day be. She did not dream at night of helping others. There was no kindness in her for that type of life. 

Marisa learned that she was a pretty girl. The face in the looking glass changed as the years went by. The roundness of her youth flattened into sharp cheekbones and clever eyes. She spent hours under the warm yellow tinge of naptha light tilting her head this way and that way, using the muscles in her face to flit from one emotion to the next or to show no emotion at all. 

The teachers all cooed over her. 

She was not a stupid girl either. 

While the other girls were content to gossip about things inside the school, Marisa collected scraps from the outside. She especially liked how the word Magistrate sounded on her tongue, feeling her daemon’s fur quiver when she said it aloud. 

It was a grand scheme and every bit of it she hungrily took up as her own. The formulation of a future began to take shape.

 

 

When her body no longer was slim like a child’s, when she had grown curves and pretty became beautiful, the teachers of the school introduced her to others. She had made no secret that she was interested in the Church, fawning over their lessons and teachings so as to cement their belief in her, and they had all remarked on how clever and smart she was. 

Men were new, but this too was a game, and it was no so hard to know that they liked her smiles and her words of admiration for their duties and services. 

“Marisa,” they said, “This is Mr. Coulter.” 

Her daemon’s nails bit through her dress. 

Edward was his name. 

Marisa saw a future when she let him take her hand.

She became Mrs. Coulter in less than a month. 

 

 

Marisa took a husband and so became Mrs. Coulter. 

Edward opened doors, so many of them, and she grabbed at all of them that she could. The Magistrate grew every day, once a shadow now something spoken about in hushed whispered voices behind closed doors, and Edward was friends with so many. He introduced her, and she smiled ever so prettily for them and situated herself to hear all they had to say. 

It was complacent work though. It wasn’t very hard. It required very little of her time and attention. Being a wife was just that, a wife. 

It was easy. 

“Yes, darling,” she’d answer to her husband and try to keep the boredom from her voice. 

 

 

 

“We are to go to the Royal Arctic Institute tonight, my dear.”

“Oh?”

“There is a man who is to speak. He should be quite interesting.” 

She did not think much of it, but still she curled her hair and reddened her lips and slipped silk on that clung to her skin. 

 

 

He certainly was interesting. 

The men before were boring, but he was not, and when he began to talk, when he told of places far from London proper, places with ice and snow and heat and sand and hot sun, she sat straighter. Her daemon and she alike listened hungrily. His little hands gripped at her gown and thoughts passed between them during pauses. They watched the way he moved his hands as he spoke, the green eyes of his snow leopard daemon tracking the room. They let the sound of his voice, brunt and arrogant and rough, slide over every part of them, rooting deep inside and anchoring somewhere that would never disappear or unlatch. 

When Edward introduced them, she did not smile. 

“Marisa, this is Lord Asriel.” 

She bared her teeth instead. 

 

 

And when he asked her to dance, she gave him her hand. 

This was the game and here was her player.


End file.
